Posthumous apologies to all those who had been holding their breath waiting for the latest drops of wisdom from me.

One of the things about having a baby is that it leaves you with less time to do all the other fun things you want to do, and to be brutally honest, posting meitherings about my boring life is way down on my list of priorities. Below Civ 4, certainly.

So, a brief update. 

Emily has become rather more interactive of late, and has developed a fascination with feeling fabrics. She is also convinced that somewhere out there there is a person with a detachable nose, and she will keep experimenting until she finds them. At least she tends to burst into spontaneous giggles on the changing mat instead of bawling. She seems generally to be a fairly happy child, which is nice. She was baptised on Sunday (Claire's family are Catholic, so the plan was a Baptism for them and a Dedication at the Baptist Church for us. The Baptists Church are of course now being resistant to the idea), and gurgled happily all the way through.

She does seem on the other hand to have developed her dad's propensity for a spot of eczema. Her cheeks, which are often covered in dribble, become quite red and sore, and then she scratches at them despite our best efforts.

Anyway, enough with the baby. 

We've been having some fun recently with the launch of our very own mini Blood Bowl league, with me and Claire and our friends Clare and Toby. Clare and Toby are running one team each, while me and Claire run two, to keep life interesting. If you've not come across Blood Bowl before, it's a board game made by Games Workshop back in the 90s - essentially dice-based American Football played with Orcs, Elves and so on. The game isn't made any more (some would say that this is because the absolute maximum of miniatures you need to buy is about 20, as opposed to the-sky's-the-limit-the-more-the-merrier in a battle game), but there's an active online community and GW have at least allowed the rules to be published online and tinkered with a lot. They're on Living Rule Book 5.0 at the moment, I think. I'm not doing very well at all, but I always was bad at rolling dice. I'm not sure *how* you can be bad at something that's essentially random, but the amount of times that the following happens in a game suggests I might just have a jinx or something.

"OK, so he's going to pass the ball. It's a Quick Pass, so that means I need a 3+ to make the pass. (rolls). 2.  Still, I have the Pass skill (which allows me to re-roll that). (rolls again). 1. Crap."

  

I may have mentioned that my brother-in-law is taking part in the World Croquet Championships in New Zealand at the moment.

If I didn't, I'm mentioning it now.

Anyway, he's playing in the Quarter-Finals today, so go him...

So I finally got round to spending my Christmas Borders voucher this week. 

Alongside the DVD of "The Corpse Bride" which I have yet to watch and may report on when I do, the other item I picked up was "Highlights from Jeff Wayne's Musican Version of the War of the Worlds" which takes almost as long to say as to listen to.

For the uninitiated, JW'sMVotWotW (much snappier) is a prog behemoth that was made during the late 70s - in fact, it's as old as I am, since it was released in 1978. It follows the plot of HG Wells' original "War of the Worlds" very closely, with only a few minor deviations from detail or in which characters do what - largely to make the story easier to tell without too much exposition.

The original album was released on four (count 'em) LPs or cassettes and most of the tracks ran to ten or fifteen minutes long, so an editted radio-play version was made to enable DJs to pull small segments out, and this version was eventually generally released as "Highlights of..." - it was that which was in the Borders sale.

Now, I'd never heard most of the album, though I knew from the bits I had heard that it was something I'd like to own. What I hadn't expected was - well, firstly to find out that the song I've always thought of as "When You're Not Here" is in fact called "Forever Autumn" and is from this album - but also that the music would be just as weird and alien sounding today as it must have sounded back then. Let's face it, some of the experimental bleeps and farts that comprised Doctor Who incidental music during Jon Pertwee's tenure haven't aged that well.

They sound bleepy and farty, like some guy with a synthesizer going "hey, let's see what this one does". WotW manages to sound at once entirely of its time and yet thoroughly modern too. The eerie tracks like "The Red Weed" really do make your hackles rise a little and wouldn't be entirely comfortable listening in, say, a mist-shrouded early morning country lane. The more dramatic tracks sound perhaps a little more Seventies, with distorted voices and guitar licks, but still manage to do so without sounding dated. 

I must admit I wasn't expecting David Essex or Phil Lynott either, though both work perfectly. Although I have a little trouble visualising the Bloke From Thin Lizzy as a Victorian parson.

Anyway, well worth grabbing a copy while it's on Two-Stickered-Items-For-A-Tenner at Borders.

You see what I mean?

Normally,  you start a new journal and you're editing in it every day or so until you run out of enthusiasm and it slowly fizzles out.

I plan to set new standards in apathy by running out of enthusiasm all the way through.

It must also be pointed out that I really don't lead that exciting a life. True, we've just had a baby, which sort of qualifies as exciting, but there's only so much you can write about poo and sick and milk and nappies before it starts getting old.

Besides, I'd quite like the opportunity to talk about something else for a change - one thing I hadn't realised was that, when you have a baby, your conversational options at work or any social event are limited to "So, how's the baby? Is she sleeping through yet?". 

So, obligatory baby photos available at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=17411&l=66b32&id=666727925 and now we'll move on...

I dare say no-one's reading this yet, but if they are, they're welcome to have a go at my 37 Songs.

If you've not come across this one, the idea is to go through your MP3 player on random and record the first two lines of the first 37 songs it brings up, post them here and let people try and identify them.

Like the_elyan, I've ignored inappropriate tracks (Spoken word, instrumental...) and skipped the third and subsequent track by any given artist. I've also skipped tracks by local artists that no-one else is going to know (though if you do know of Dan Webster or Monkey Bucket, you're welcome to make yourself known to me anyway).

 

( The songs )

Right, attempt number two at having a Livejournal.

I'll warn you now, I'm an infrequent editor at best, and I don't usually have much of interest to say, I suspect I will primarily be using this journal to talk about films & TV shows I've seen recently and to whinge about things.

I used to have an LJ (it's still there, I believe) but it's been so long that I've forgotten my password, LJ's restrictions are so finicky I couldn't use any of my usual ones and I've changed my email address so the "Mail me my password" thing didn't work either.

Not like I'm bothered, it was just a pain. A couple of times I've read things on the_elyan's journal and wanted to comment but couldn't, so I sighed and created another account.

Still, who knows. I might get around to doing something with it.